Money, medicine and a good-looking woman: the fall of...

2of3Phyllis Gardner (left) talks with guests during a reception after a screening of HBO’s “The Inventor.”Photo: Kim White / Film Magic for HBO

3of3Tyler Shultz (center) talks with guests at a party after a screening of HBO’s “The Inventor.”Photo: Kim White / Film Magic for HBO

HBO likes to preview its film offerings in San Francisco, where there’s an educated audience of film lovers. But on Monday, March 11, the Letterman Digital Arts Center preview of “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” — to be released the following week on Monday, March 18 — was particularly site specific. Silicon Valley is where it all happened.

The documentary tells the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, the company she founded in 2003 that purported to revolutionize medicine by using a drop of blood instead of a vial to test for hundreds of conditions. Eventually, after investors had put something like $9 billion into the company, it was revealed that all was hype and that the system didn’t work. Ultimately, Holmes was charged by the SEC with “massive fraud.” A criminal case is pending.

Holmes is a glamorous young woman, whose intense blue-eyed stare (she never blinked, said a Theranos employee) and trademark black turtlenecks were much admired in Silicon Valley. This, it was agreed upon in a panel discussion that followed the showing, was part of the lure for investors and board members, most of whom — George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch among them — were older men, seduced not only by her self-proclaimed genius but also by her youth and looks.

The panel discussion, well moderated by journalist Ina Fried of Axios, included filmmaker and director AlexGibney, producer Jessie Deeter, Tyler Shultz and Phyllis Gardner, the last two witnesses in the movie.

Among academic accomplishments too numerous to mention, Gardner is a physician at Stanford and a consultant paying special attention to startups. Early on, when Holmes approached her to describe the idea that would lead to Theranos, Gardner told her it wouldn’t work. Gardner said she was put off from the start by Holmes, who ignored her and founded the company anyway. Eventually, Gardner’s instinct proved to be on target. A “liar, sociopath, sadistic and cruel” is the way she describes Holmes nowadays. “It’s so crazy that she has this wizardry over people.”

Tyler Shultz, grandson of George Shultz, a board member and strong supporter of Theranos, started working there right after he graduated from Stanford University. Less than a year later, much against the advice of his grandfather, he says in the film, he became a whistle-blower, although he’d signed a nondisclosure agreement.

There’s a gripping description of a confrontation between young Shultz and lawyers representing Theranos, which took place at the Palo Alto home of his grandfather and his wife, Charlotte Shultz. At that point, the elder Shultzes still believed in Holmes and in her company. Nonetheless, as grandparents, their first impulse was to protect Tyler from threatening lawyers. The whistle-blower and the lawyers were placed in separate rooms, and George Shultz shuttled back and forth between rooms of his house to try to make peace. (Later, in light of revelations, George Shultz resigned from the board.)

The crowd gathered to see the movie included MC Hammer, whose famed song “U Can’t Touch This” is used in the movie, and tech super-stars Sebastian Thrun and Marc Benioff. After the film, the crowd, electrified, strolled over to a reception at Sessions, where the movie’s witnesses were approachable for conversation.

• A Nextdoor listing in the city suggests networking to arrange swaps of pet care while folks are on vacation. “I have three chinchillas,” wrote someone, “and they are easy to take care of.” That so? Googling chinchillas, I came across many endorsements of their fine qualities as house pets, but also the observation, “The only time ours have smelt bad is when they peed on their wooden bridge.” So if you don’t have a wooden bridge, swap away.

• At the Aroma Cafe in San Rafael, Greg Schmidt was watching the approach of a “tallish man ... toting a large cross, about 10 by 7 feet, day of reckoning music blaring from his backpack. ... He decides he needs a break and asks a man sitting at an outdoor cafe table if he would mind watching his sign. ‘A Jesus-hater might mess with it.’” The seated man turned down the request quickly. “No Jesus haters down here. It’s just one of your crosses to bear.”

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Leah Garchik washed up on the shores of Fifth and Mission in 1972, began her duties as a part-time temporary steno clerk, and has done everything around The Chronicle including washing the dishes (her coffee cup). Over the years, she has served as writer, reviewer, editor and columnist. She is the author of two books, “San Francisco: Its Sights and Secrets” and “Real Life Romance."

She is an avid knitter, a terrible accordion player, a sporadic tweeter and a pretty good speller.